No matter what system you use for determining your list of desired upgrades, before you do boot up your armory profile and consider this little bit of advice:

An upgrade is only as good as the piece it is replacing.

Take, if you will, the case of Tarsus’ gloves. They’re Tier 8 (Ulduar) set gear. I’m not still wearing them because they’re some sort of super itemized awesome piece – I’m wearing them because my Tier 9 options were downright underwhelming. Given the sparsity of hit on Tier 9 gear, that 49 hit rating was quite valuable – and they didn’t exactly have another option available. In terms of my list of priority – gloves were then at the bottom.

Now looking at what is available in Tier 10, I have other options. Specifically I have an attraction to the Sanctified Ymirjar Lord’s Handguards, now that (come Tuesday) they have bonus armor on them. Having that clear of an upgrade over my existing gloves moves them substantially up the priority list (now at priority one, since that is my last piece of Non-Heroic Tier 8 gear).

Sometimes this is easier than others, as described in the example above. It is, however, more difficult when you have to weigh the impact on your entire gear set. For example, you could pick up Last Word – but it has no defense, no hit, no expertise – hell it doesn’t have anything on it by stamina and that proc. That is a pretty hefty hit when you compare it to my Sorthalis – I need to find some of those stats elsewhere before I can equip it. Down on the priority list it goes (despite replacing gear of lower Tier). I still need a weapon upgrade, but maybe I can stand to find some new boots first.

So, when weighing spending your DKP or just making up your list – remember that your tank is the sum of their parts and give some thought to your upgrades and prioritize. You never know, there might be another tank in your raid that needs that piece more than you and you need to know how generous you can be.

First off, I’m not going to go into the 5-man lootables. In case you missed it, Kadomi did a super job covering that stuff already.

What I am going to do is talk about Raid and Emblem loot (or at least what we know about it thus far). I’m not going to worry about “Heroic” versions of these items either. You’re not going to see them until, well, I guess February or March anyway.

In case it hasn’t been said enough on the WoW Blog-o-sphere, I’m going to add to the chorus my own voice and say that I’m not the biggest fan of Trial of the Crusader. I’ve hinted at this, but for the purpose of this bit of outrage I’m about to produce, it is key to acknowledge this openly.

I thought that I could get away with doing ToC only once a week in the interest of maintaining my gear progression.

I thought that this would be sufficient, seeing as I was also wiping for hours and hours on Trial of the Grand Crusader as well.

Among other news, there does not appear to be any form of Quel’Delar designed for tanks (boo!). On the plus side, most of this gear is the best itemized we’ve seen to date in WoTLK, so there will be plenty of opportunities for tanking, very soon. Remember though folks, this is PTR loot so it could change very soon (not to mention this is only the loot that we’ve managed to see thus far!.

Check out the Tauren models. Blizzard finally put holes in the helmet for our horns. I thought that Tier 8 would be the last time I would turn my helm graphic on. Man, was I ever wrong.

Here’s hoping that this is the beginning of theme. Elves and Trolls need some loving too. Maybe dwarves. Let’s face it, helms chop off and through a lot of things people took time or spent gold to customize. It’s about time they gave us helms that actually let us show that off.

It is fairly easy to see the pattern here. The 2-piece set bonus is always something that generally increases threat. It’s hard to argue with something so basic and functional – though never something to write home about – not unlike getting that 3rd rank in Incite. By contrast, the 4-piece bonus is like an extra glyph slot, some secret new functionality to an already useful ability.

I’ve already talked about how I love the functionality of the Tier 8 4-piece bonus. I’ll not mince words, however, about the Tier 9 bonus. It’s terrible. Sure, you could pop Shield Block every 20 seconds for the bonus to your shield slam, but from a defensive point of view it adds no particular functionality because Shield Block is such a weak cooldown. The 2-piece bonus is actually even worse, in some ways, because Taunt has become so handicapped.

With that in mind, the Tier 10 4-piece bonus is a really awesome addition to the Warrior repertoire. Assuming the continued growth in health pools, it’s easy to imagine being able to produce a shield that can absorb 10k worth of damage every 30 seconds. That’s magic damage. That’s physical damage. It’s a lot of little hits. It’s a good chunk off of a large hit. I suspect it will stack with healer damage absorption. It scales very well with your gear. It’s hard to imagine a situation where this wouldn’t be useful, and easy to imagine a situation where it would be very useful (I’m thinking Heroic Gormok the Impaler here).

Now, bear in mind, these things have a way of changing on the PTR, so take this with a grain of salt. But until then, there’s something to smile about warriors – this is probably our best protection set-bonus yet.